1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color processing apparatus and color processing method and, more particularly, to a color processing apparatus and color processing method required for color adjustment of a display device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various methods of adjusting colors of a display device such as a monitor or projector are known. These color adjustment methods include a method of directly adjusting RGB values, a method of adjusting hue, lightness, and saturation values, and the like. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-250058 (literature 1) discloses a technique for respectively providing adjustment values to lightness, saturation, and hue values of a target color since it is difficult to adjust colors when hue, saturation, and lightness values are independently adjusted, that is, a technique for adjusting 9 (=3×3) types of parameters.
These color adjustment methods are used not only for the purpose of adjustment of colors of a display device to desired colors by the user but also in an operation for matching appearances of a display device and, for example, a printed matter (to be referred to as a “color matching operation” hereinafter). Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-203622 (literature 2) discloses a color adjustment technique including a color matching operation. That is, color matching properties are stored based on user's color matching experiments, and a color matching property corresponding to user identification information is selected to execute color conversion. Literature 2 describes a method of selecting a color patch of a desired color from a plurality of color patches, and conducting color adjustment in addition to the aforementioned color adjustment method.
However, the method of adjusting parameters such as RGB values and lightness, hue, and saturation values, as described in literature 1, allows higher degrees of freedom for the user, but it is difficult to judge parameters to be adjusted and their degrees of adjustment, resulting in troublesome color adjustment. Furthermore, even when a parameter is designated, it is difficult to judge whether or not that value is optimal.
Also, the method of selecting a color patch from a plurality of color patch allows the user to select a color patch close to a desired color from presented color patches, but the user cannot often select the desired color itself. As a result, in order to obtain a desired color adjustment result, the user has to adjust parameters such as RGB values and hue, lightness, and saturation values, thus posing the same problem as above.